Dammann Frères

I… don’t like this. I’m considering composting or gifting because I don’t want to sip it down. It’s very chemically and I’m just… not interested.

The tea smells of flowers and figs. However, it falls short of the anticipated lavender essence that a tea named “Provence” would suggest.

On the palate, the flavour hints at a distant echo of “Noël à Prague” black tea (plum black tea), but with a more muted profile that feels somewhat drab. Despite a four-minute steep, even the tea leaves remain lackluster.

This blend may not find its way into my shopping cart again. It’s good but I’ll stick with other, more preferred options.

This tisane unfolds with an alluring fragrance reminiscent of ripe berries. The aroma, while distinctly hibiscus, foregoes the tart, almost aggressive notes often associated with this vibrant flower.

The infusion evokes a summery blend of lemonade and freshly crushed raspberries. It is a brew of commendable character, better than most other hibiscus fruisanes, albeit still unmistakably a hibiscus story hence the low note.

Picked this one up from Dammann Freres when I got my advent because, I mean, how could I miss the opportunity to taste DF’s interpretation of a blend inspired by the city I live in. Plus, I usually adore their “Christmas In…” tea series.

I put a sample of this in the handmade tea advent I gifted my coworker this year because even though I hadn’t tried it yet I knew she would love the name and stylistically it’s very much the type of teas she goes for. I think in her advent it was the tea for the 23rd? Anyway, she made a point to message me when she drank it even though we were both on vacation at this point just to let me know how much she adored it – so I was stoked to try it myself.

I am… unsure how I feel about it, which is a little bit of a let down in and of itself. I think the flavours they chose to represent Montreal feel pretty solid: chestnut, maple, apple, chocolate, and then a bit of anise and orange. In particular I think the chestnut is really strong as an option and maple is, of course, the low hanging choice. But, it’s just A LOT of flavours happening on the palate and I found it a little cacophonous. Sure, it’s mostly the chocolate, chestnut, and apple notes that come through over all the other ones but it’s still too busy tasting for me.

Now, that said, I have that sort of Spidey Sense that this might be the type of blend that grows on you the more you drink it and I think it probably also would have benefited me to drink it the way she had (ie. without an ingredient list) so that I wasn’t “looking” for the flavours and could have better allowed them to bleed over into one another to create a more ethereal profile. I’ll probably try to drink it that way next time, as much as I mentally can let go of that inherent feeling of needing to solve/pick apart the notes.

Anyway, all that to say it’s not unpleasant and I feel like I kind of see the vision. I just want it to be a bit more stripped down. I think just apple and chestnut would have been really lovely tasting – maybe with a hint of the maple. Chestnut feels very Canadiana to me and makes me think of the buckwheat and chestnut crepes so commonly served in the opens markets during the summers here, but is also kind of festive and wintery. So that’s the flavour I’d probably have doubled down on.

Adventageddon Day 23

I started the morning with a lot of caffeine, so I was actually kind of happy for once to see a “sleep tea” as my last offering of the day. Opening up the sachet I was blasted with two distinct aromas: lemon candy and black licorice.

Steeped up, those flavours really only get doubled down on for an overall cup that is bright, citrusy and fairly sweet. The lemon and anise combination really reads a lot like a throat lozenge and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it’s more one of those flavours I’d need to be in a relatively particular mood to want to drink. Very mouth coating, as well. Overall it was nice to break up all of the decadence of the morning, though. For me, this is a very straight down the middle of the road kind of tea blend.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DD79dBPyeuo/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKb_2vzkqg&ab_channel=EmileMosseri-Topic

Adventageddon Day 22

I was so surprised opening this up in the morning because there were actually two sachets of this tea. At first I thought it must have been a packaging mistake, but then it clicked that it’s actually a very sweet and cheeky bonus inclusion to fit the name of the tea. Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone at home with me right now to share the extra sachet with – but I think it’s an adorable concept.

As far as taste goes, this is a pretty standard breakfast-style black tea. Brisk and full bodied with strong malty and woody notes and just a bit of a brighter citrus edge to it and some softer floral undertones. Really coppery and rich tasting. I debated adding some milk and sugar to make it more “classic breakfast blend” feeling but I was enjoying it a lot on its own so I left it that way.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DD5YtkaSoDn/?img_index=1

The mug I drank this out of is new (from the market I went to yesterday) and just STUNNING. I was scrolling through the artist’s IG page today and I think maybe it’s inspired by a pidgeon that got into her studio earlier in the year – a bit terrifying in practice because a wild bird is going to knock delicate teaware off shelves. However, I love the inspiration it clearly gave her – this cup series was so beautiful and I had a hell of a hard time deciding on which colour way to purchase. The white and pastel pink were really, really gorgeous as well.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCABjShJ5Zk&ab_channel=Birdtalker

DF Advent — Day 22

This reads like a classic afternoon tea to me. Clear taste that’s coppery, woody, floral, fruity. Smooth body with light touch of astringency. A nice mix of Darjeeling and Nilgiri leaves. Appreciated the 2 bags of Tea for Two.

DF Advent — Day 21

Clear and fresh, crisp pear was the dominant taste and did it deliver! mixed with the light flavor of chestnut cream. Hay-like and slightly earthy-floral white tea base carried the flavorings beautifully. I generally shy away from nutty teas but this was divine!

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 21 (my pick)
Theme: Sugar Plum Fairy
Her pick: Organic Passion Plum from The English Tea Room

I had to choose this tea for Sugar Plum Fairy day! Definitely the best plum flavoring I’ve ever had. I love plums, but plum teas are always so disappointing to me, most of the time they have cinnamon and hibiscus, and even when they don’t, they rarely taste like actual plum. This one does taste just like a sweet & tangy plum, the small yellow-green kind or the ones with reddish-purple skin and yellow flesh (I don’t know the names lol). The smell is intoxicating when it’s steeping.

But the base here is a bit odd, it gets bitter so easily. I would consider my usual steeping parameters for flavored green tea to be quite conservative – 2 minutes at 175 degrees. But this tea still has an edge of bitterness, even with a short steep. Next time I’ll have to try lowering the temperature even more to see if that helps. Regardless, still delicious, so it’s worth the trouble to suss out the right parameters!

Adventageddon Day 20

This was my first cup of the day. A nice, gentle start to the day which was nice because I woke up quite groggy feeling. Overall I found the tea fairly mediocre though. Its a cherry blossom/sakura flavoured green tea base. Very, very simple and straight forward. The kind of tea I’ve tasted from other companies a dozen times over. It’s not that it tastes unpleasant or anything, but when a blend is this stripped down it has to execute those flavours PERFECTLY and I feel like this reads almost more generic floral versus really having those clearly defined notes of sakura. But, like I said, not bad at all. And I appreciated how smooth the green tea base was.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DD0PAQWSm53/?img_index=1

A little mini tangent about the mug that I drank this tea in. It’s from a DT winter collection like four or five years ago, and I find the three different puppers on the toboggan so cute. Especially the poodle. But every year when I bring it out for the holiday season I forget until I go to take a picture of it that the main part of the design is DIRECTLY across from the handle, so it’s impossible to hold the hot mug of tea and get the full art in shot. Drives me nuts…

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8MLZFL9dh4&ab_channel=MACEY

DF Advent — Day 20

The theme of this tea is sakura and strawberry, yet the strongest taste was of an umami that tasted like over-fertilized sencha. Sakura and strawberry tasted fake. I poured this one out!

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 17 (my pick)
Theme: Santa’s Reindeer
Her pick: Reindeer Fuel from Adagio

Apparently I’ve never written a note for this?! I should really go through my virtual cupboard and find all the older teas that I haven’t tried or written about…

Anyway, I really like this one. It almost reminds me of a white tea, it has that same light and airy hay and oat flavor, with just a touch of green-ness. The oat tastes a bit raw, a touch earthy. It’s lightly creamy and then the caramel toffee part pokes it head out near the end of the sip to give a sweet finish. Just really unusual and lovely!

DF Advent — Day 16

Beautiful aroma. Orange blossom water and sweet rose water with a bit of ginger spice. I don’t remember the contribution of the base tea. Guess that means it played well with the flavoring. I would love this in the summer!

DF Advent — Day 15

Catching up, short notes.

Don’t remember much about this, probably because I’m not a fan of lemongrass. Mild tea, which has a place and time. I probably would’ve drank this while sick this past week had I any appetite for tea.

Adventageddon Day 15

As far as lemon ginger teas go this is a very average feeling one to me. Smooth and grassy green tea base that accentuates the grassiness of the lemongrass and the brightness of the lemon oil. I don’t taste a ton of ginger though. Just a whisper. It could be bolder or more evenly balanced but lemon is what they chose to put in the name and not lemon ginger, so I feel like the emphasis on the lemon is pretty intentional.

However, this tea was the perfect vessel for a brand new and pretty out there flavoured honey I recently got. It’s got propolis in it along with lime, thyme, juniper, and peppermint essential oils. You’d think that would be a lot and it would be challenging to distinctly taste each flavour, but you would also be wrong. The honey starts off very bright, zesty and just a little bit sour before the golden sweetness hits along with very herbaceous and pine-y notes from the thyme/juniper combo. Finally, it has a really nice cooling sensation afterwards from the mint. I don’t know if I’ve ever had honey with a menthol effect, but I am in love with it. The overall combination actually reminds me a lot of gin!

So, obviously all of those flavours work really well with the green tea and lemon. I felt like it really elevated what was just an okay cup of tea otherwise. I’m STOKED to try this honey with more things!

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDnXG-LSVmP/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66lb0Tp232k&ab_channel=ChanceEmerson-Topic

This was a funny one to drink right after Krampistachio by BrutaliTeas because it gave me a lot of similar vibes but was more successful overall. Definitely getting both the orange and almond throughout. I’m not familiar with a panettone but this cup feels like a sweet bread with dried fruit and nuts, which sounds like it might fit the bill well!

Dammann Freres advent day 5

I was absolutely taken out for the week by an unplanned tooth extraction and bridge prep and all the fun recovery that went along with it, so there’s a lot of catching up to do.

Day 4 was a lot of fun because of the variety across teas.
I can’t figure out how I feel about this one! It absolutely feels like drinking in a garden, with a wide variety of blooms and a hint of fruit. Rose, which is a favorite of mine, is one of the few florals I can distinguish; I don’t recognize many of the other flavors. I love that it’s bold and unique, and I keep coming back to smell it (including the packet that held the sachet!) But there’s one particular flavor that lingers just a little too long in the scent and taste, and while I don’t know what it is, I can say I’m not a fan. I think I’m going to skip a numerical rating on this one completely. Definitely glad I’ve tried it though – a fascinating tea!

Dammann Freres advent day 4

I went to a lovely french tea shop in Kansas City, Missouri and got to try this Lapsang Souchong. The tea house, Emilie’s French Teas, advertised this tea with the line – KC BBQ Style. If you know about Kansas City, you know how important the smoker is to the barbeque that is made her.

It was my first lapsang I have tried, but loving smokey flavor in whiskey and pork alike, I knew I would enjoy this tea.

And I wasn’t wrong, the smokey smell from the cup was sweet and delicious, the strength made me worry about the flavor, that it would feel more like liquid smoke, but instead there was a sweetness that I have come to learn is typical of lapsangs. The sweetness is extremely subtle, and did not stick around long after the swallow, just a couple of breaths.

On a cold day in Kansas City, this was a perfect warm beverage, and though I would have loved to experience the complexities of further brews, and will report when I do have a lapsang at home that I can tinker with, the two cups from the same brew that I had at Emilie’s was wonderful, particularly with the pain au chocolat that isn’t baked until the order.

DF Advent — Day 13

Not a fan of yerba mate but this was of a gentler spirit than others I’ve had. Tastes like leafy alkaloids and vaguely grassy with some dampened smoke peaking through. I’d rather go for Dammann Frères Mate Cacao Amande, which is equally as gentle with a more pleasing flavor.

Adventageddon Day 13

To be honest I thought this was a pretty boring tea choice for DF’s advent, but the tea itself was just fine. Smooth for a mate with a milder overall flavour. A little grassy and mineral with just the faintest sort of smoke note. I could see that it might be a nice introductory mate for someone who’s never tried it plain before.

As I just mentioned in another tasting note, today was our office holiday party and one of the activities was a pre-registered flower arranging class. Since I knew I was going to be doing that today I brought a couple floral teacups in the hope to get some pictures. I think this one came out okay! It’s very green tinted but, to be fair, the bouquet of flowers I made was also very, very green tinted. At the end of today’s advent photos are some extra flower shots, including the bouquet I made.

I was the only one who brought a mug of tea to the class which, given that we are a tea company, feels like it shouldn’t have been the case. I guess everyone was just really focused though. In the end this ended up being a nice “backdrop tea” which I did the workshop.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDiNdwYye3L/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E7QbiC5lEg

DF Advent — Day 12

I’m not sure what rhubarb is supposed to taste like but I enjoyed this oolong. It was softly viscous, a bit tangy, lightly floral and? I don’t know I’d say elderflower and apricot but Souffle d’Été was easy to drink and made me happy in the moment. Would gladly try again especially in late spring!

DF Advent — Day 11

Rooibos Oriental has a really smooth red rooibos taste that doesn’t come across as medicinal to me. It’s more like cedar with black currant. Woody yet smooth. The flavorings are supposed to be passionfruit, bush peach and strawberry. Dammann Frères has a great passionfruit flavoring but I don’t taste it here. What makes itself known, however muddled the fruitiness presents, is the peach and strawberry combination. This tastes like the 1980s to me, which has happened with another fruity rooibos from August Uncommon whose name I can’t recall. Rooibos Oriental is fine enough but nothing I’d want to keep on hand, considering I prefer unflavored rooibos.

Adventageddon Day 11

Definitely not a fan of the name of this tea – I think DF probably could have picked a name without roots in colonialism and the broad fetishization/exoticism of Asian people and culture that would have still gotten the “vibe” of the tea across…

But, name aside, I also just didn’t love the taste of this tea either. I’m not 100% what the fruit flavour is supposed to be, but to me it tasted like maybe a mix of red fruit and a more pine-y and resinous mango? It was very medicinal though, and the more I drank the cup the more it started to remind me of cherry cough syrup.

So, unfortunately, hard pass on this blend for me.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDdEnRYpD_0/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://youtu.be/RHqsYVpf4Kc?si=dx2VDqi8SmbiWwBx

DF Advent — Day 10

Conceptually, I enjoyed the idea of the mix of tastes, but Tourbillon was so overwhelmingly perfumey that it produced a slight headache. Too bad, as this was much like orange blossom water, which I love, and had a strong buckwheat syrup-caramel aftertaste. Indeed, a whirlwind.